Jerry's birthday hop is cancelled

It was a party Jerry Hall had been dreading - so perhaps getting out of it was a blessing in disguise.

But as this picture of her looking frail after a fall shows, this is hardly the way she would have liked to commemorate her 50th birthday.

The former model winced as she used a crutch to shuffle down the steps of her home in Richmond, South-West London, at the weekend.

She had to have her leg tightly bandaged and put in a brace after taking a tumble at a friend's party on Thursday evening.

Witnesses described how she fell into an 'undignified heap' when she slipped, twisting her ankle, as she tried to pull off a rather ambitious dance move.

'She went down like a felled redwood - with quite some force - and let out a yelp as she hit the floor,' said a partygoer. 'She lay there looking quite shocked.

'She could barely stand, let alone walk, afterwards. The sprain was very severe and she will be out of action for quite a while.'

Miss Hall was taken to hospital and had her left leg X-rayed. Doctors told her it had been sprained badly and she would be on crutches for some time.

The 6ft Texan told her personal assistant to phone friends and cancel her lavish 50th birthday celebrations, which had been due to take place in Ireland last night.

A party for 150 had been planned at Leixlip Castle near Dublin. Friends including Pete Townshend, Richard E Grant and Miss Hall's former husband Sir Mick Jagger were to be among the guests.

Last night one friend of Miss Hall's said: 'Jerry was always dreading her 50th birthday.

'It's a big hurdle for any woman - never mind an internationally famous supermodel.

'And for a woman who battled so long and publicly so save her marriage to Mick only for him to go off with a string of younger women, the last thing she needed was to be reminded that she is 50 and single.

'So when she took the tumble it was really quite a convenient way to pull a discreet veil over the whole birthday party - which had been planned for months.'

Over the weekend, friends and family celebrated the occasion in a more muted way at home Miss Hall shares with her four children by Sir Mick on Richmond Hill. Jagger visited for a few hours yesterday, while a steady stream of well-wishers arrived with gifts and flowers.